By December 1645, there were 970,000 nationals in China with more than formal residency, of whom 34% were minors. It also includes tens of thousands of people who have temporary settlement rights for various reasons, as well as tens of thousands of Indian reservations who are "quasi-nationals."

The base of the national population continued to expand, and although the general fertility rate declined slightly in recent years, it still had an average high value of 230 in 1645. In the three major cities of Manchester City, Qingcheng and Yacheng, the general fertility rate has fallen below the 200 mark for the first time due to the very few new immigrants who have been resettled in recent years. (Note: General fertility rate refers to the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age per year)

Although tens of thousands of new immigrants join the country every year, the compulsory compulsory education for minors and adult literacy education have kept the adult illiteracy rate in Huamei below 10% over the years, and it is expected that the adult illiteracy rate will continue to be reduced to less than 5% as the base of localized citizens becomes more and more solid.

It is foreseeable that the overall young national population structure should be full of vigor and hope, and the demographic dividend of the new generation brought about by the new civilization education led by the public has been slowly released, and will really bloom in ten years.

Compared with the rapid increase in the national population, the proportion of Chinese soldiers in the total population has been declining. At present, excluding the Foreign Legion, after the completion of the new round of recruitment, the total number of officers and men in the army and navy has reached 19,500, accounting for less than 2% of the country's population, including about 8,000 in the army and about 11,000 in the navy.

Such a ratio of soldiers to civilians is still on the high side of the modern state standard in peacetime.

Within the Defence Force, the main strength of the Army is four brigade-sized units, including three infantry brigades and one cavalry brigade, in addition to the capital garrison battalion, a small number of gendarmerie units and a number of military civilian units.

Normally. A standard Chinese Army infantry combat brigade will include a brigade headquarters, three standard infantry battalions, a light field artillery battalion, a light baggage battalion, and a brigade-affiliated cavalry company, with a total strength of between 2,800 and 2,900.

However, with the exception of the 3rd Infantry Brigade (Vostok Brigade), which was deployed in the Far East, which was fully manned, the other two infantry brigades left on the mainland were not fully manned, and were only about half of their normal strength.

However, thanks to the reserve system of the National Guard Force, which has been in place for many years, the brigade establishment of the Chinese and US Army at this time was more of a symbol of the regularization of the construction of the standing army, and it was also a necessary mode to save military spending as much as possible in peacetime.

In contrast, although the Chinese and US Navy has added four 2,200-ton Peace-class light cruisers, two 3,400-ton Nuwa-class light cruisers, and a number of auxiliary ships in the past four years, the Standing Strength of the Chinese Navy is still relatively abundant.

This made it possible for the capital warships, which had not previously been able to operate at full sailo, to sail in combat readiness. At present, it is also possible to carry 20 percent more sailors for rotation and rest in key combat readiness posts, so that the ocean-going combat effectiveness of the main warships can be further improved.

After three years of expansion, the Marine Corps has now become a reinforced battalion combat unit with more than 900 officers and men. The Marines have only made a simple appearance in Jiangzhou before, but it is certain that future military operations in Europe will be a stage for the Marines to act as the absolute main force.

However, as the strategic adjustment of the Far East and the pace of intervention in the European war approached, even if the Chinese and US Army recruited reserves to meet the existing troop strength, the problem of insufficient total strength was becoming more and more prominent.

Domestically, the threat from the Iroquois Indian League in the north has been reduced to an all-time low. However, after annexing Virginia a few years ago and establishing the Jiangzhou Administrative District, Huamei also inherited the negative assets of the original English colonists, the military threat of hostile southern Indian groups mainly Bohatans.

In order to eliminate these uncontrollable potential southern threats, Huamei has successively committed several Wehrmacht infantry battalions, cavalry battalions, and about half of the Foreign Legion Bison Brigade. At present, the clearance and expulsion operation along Zhou Kemin City to the areas on both sides of the middle reaches of the James River has achieved good results. But to consolidate the gains in the long term, more native army units need to be invested.

On the European side, assuming the lowest level and least direction of military intervention, it is expected that at least one brigade-sized ground force will be committed. After all, once you get involved. The enemy is not on the simple scale of a few thousand Dutch mercenaries ten years ago.

In the Far East, there are currently two full-strength combat brigades (the Eastern Brigade and the Brown Bear Brigade) on standby, but after missing the window of the best military operations in 1645. It is foreseeable that the new military operation plan in the Far East will require additional army forces to be effectively implemented.

The strictest is probably the Indian Ocean, where the "low-intensity armed intervention" led by Governor Sun Hongyi earlier this summer has now become a substantial bankruptcy.

In addition to a battalion of the Foreign Legion's Gray Wolf Brigade, the patchwork force also included a number of National Guard units drawn from the Nanshan Overseas Territory, the South African Viceroyalty, and the Indian Ocean Governorate, and the total strength barely reached the size of a brigade.

In the face of the historical rise of the kingdom of Merina on the island of Madagascar, with the help of the rebellion of indigenous tribes on the west coast and south of Africa, the paramilitary operation of the Chinese and American colonial superintendents was opportunistic from the beginning.

The king of the Kingdom of Merina, Andrian Jaka, rejected the Chinese colonial government's harsh demands for land division in the north, and then the colonial war broke out, which was described in Chinese newspapers as "a low-level trade conflict".

After years of bartering, the rulers of the Merina Kingdom obtained a large number of 21B flintlock pistols, and then the army of Indonesian descendants who were familiar with the mountainous terrain of Madagascar Island was divided into two, focusing on the original black tribal rebels in the west and south, and using only a small number of troops to resist the Chinese colonial army invading from the northeast coast.

The Chinese and American colonial troops, dragging heavy baggage, were completely mentally unprepared to deal with this kind of large-scale indigenous guerrilla warfare with a large number of hot weapon elements. The main force from Songhai Town stopped and stopped all the way, and was even led by the opponent in the mountains for several laps.

The last news that appeared in the newspaper was the report that the Chinese and American colonial troops were about to arrive on the Central Plateau before the National Day.

At the beginning of autumn, the Chinese colonial army finally arrived in the central plateau of Madagascar, and after destroying several large villages and towns of the Merina people, a tropical falciparum malaria began to spread, and more than a third of the officers and soldiers were bedridden.

Later, the Merina people, whose main force had been retraced, launched a major counteroffensive, and the Chinese colonial army broke the siege of thousands of native troops. However, they had to leave behind hundreds of corpses and withdraw their troops in spite of a single qiē, dozens of dying and wounded people who were forced to abandon along the way, and countless broken weapons and baggage supplies were discarded.

Historically, it took more than ten years and more than 100,000 troops for France to barely establish a relatively stable colonial rule in Madagascar, and in this era, the colonial army of more than 2,000 in Huamei could not make the million-strong Kingdom of Merina bow its head.

In a way, Sun Hongyi and the Eastern Union Group behind him underestimated the determination to resist and the strength of the war of the Kingdom of Merina. The new strategy of militarily seizing northern Madagascar, gaining a foothold in the Indian Ocean, and penetrating the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent will have to be significantly slowed down for the time being.

In order to save the face of the military and to give an account in public opinion, it was necessary to negotiate reconciliation with the Kingdom of Merina soon after, and then declare internally that it was necessary to "successfully resolve the conflict crisis". Sun Hongyi is completely low-key this time. But it doesn't mean that Xiàn can swallow this breath in the Huamei high-level who concealed a qiē news report.

Perhaps in a few years, after Huamei has completed the strategic harvest in Europe and the Far East, a formal and full-scale military retaliation against the Kingdom of Merina will be on the table.

To sum up, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, from Europe to Asia, as more and more imminent military problems are waiting to be solved, the little standing military force of the United States will be difficult to deal with.

Even if the U.S. Navy can ensure the strategic security of the homeland with its existing ocean-going naval bases and force projection capabilities, it is clear that the country built by the Crossing Masses is not willing to play the farming game only in North America for most of its life. In light of various factors, the China and US Congresses have no choice but to consider increasing the standing strength of the army.

Or rather. People who are over half a hundred years old or even in the age of their prime, are eager to change and control the world with another mature mentality. The expansion of the standing military force to receive the ensuing strategic gains has become the consensus of the current Congress of the United States and even the local councils of the states, at least for the time being.

Maybe it's some kind of drill camp psychology that is at work. The House of Representatives rejected the proposal to continue the formation of a fourth Foreign Legion combat brigade, so when it came to the specific implementation of the expansion, some people began to consider the sword to go the wrong way: to cherish the national strength and transfer the war losses as the guiding ideology, and to establish a volunteer force mainly composed of young people from the Indian reservations.

This has to be said to be an extremely dark psychology at work. But in the eyes of a significant number of members of Congress, the rebellious Indian reservation residents themselves are a potential source of disharmony in the United States. Although the new generation among them has already embraced many things in the economic and cultural aspects of the United States, it is not easy to keep them in peace for a hundred years.

Nominally, it was a new unit formed as the "First Volunteer Brigade of the Chinese American Defense Force". Volunteers will be recruited from all of the "Yin reserves" throughout the country. For the younger generation of the Indian reservations, whose economic and livelihood development levels are obviously several grades behind, the treatment of the Chinese Army is obviously much better than that of the old-fashioned people on the reservation.

The large number of young men lured to serve as cannon fodder on the lavish front may not feel much of a conspiracy to the old men of the Indian reservations, who are now living in relative poverty and under increasing pressure to multiply. But to those who came up with these ideas, it was a gentle move to secretly weaken and dilute the long-term strength of the Indian reservations.

After more than 20 years of in-depth contact, whether friendly or disgusting, there are not a few young people in various Indian reservations who are interested in the beautiful life. It is envisaged that the First Volunteer Brigade of the National Defence Forces will be a "special contract volunteer", with the salaries and combat allowances of ordinary soldiers being less than half that of regular Wehrmacht soldiers, and the disability pension will be much smaller, with the greatest advantage being that the reserves where they are located will receive more preferential treatment in terms of trade and taxes.

Half of the salary allowance for all Indian Volunteers will be paid directly to the elders of the reservations for the duration of the volunteer contract. So the elders easily listened to the official propaganda of Huamei, and under the lure of visible benefits, the intention of applying was much better than one might think.

Moqi, who retired several years ago with the rank of colonel in the army, was favored by both Congress and the Army Command this time, and will be invited to return to active duty and serve as a brigade commander of the volunteer brigade.

As Li Xiang's eldest brother-in-law, Mo Qi, who is only in his forties, is now even a grandfather, and he is still the richest man in the Shang Bazaar (a town on the east bank of the middle reaches of the Song River dominated by naturalized Indians), and has a lot of influence among the Chinese American Indians. He seems to be the most appropriate person to serve as the supreme commander of a force, which is mainly of indigenous descent.

Mochi has a favorite position of the Huamei authorities, that is, he has a strong sense of national identity with Huamei, and in some respects is even more paranoid than his sister Nada. In order to make Mochi feel valued, the American Congress of China directly awarded Mochi the rank of brigadier general, which intriguingly gave birth to the first senior Indian general since the founding of the Chinese American Army.

The bulk of the volunteer brigade will come from Songzhou, followed by the Indian reservations of Haizhou and Binzhou, and all of them will be mainly Algonquin-speaking Indian tribes.

However, the overall quality of this quasi-national soldier is low, and even though most of the new generation has been educated in the community school of the reservation since childhood, the level of education is still far inferior to that of the real Chinese Americans, and even if they are allowed to serve as ordinary combat infantry, their training will be not small. Not to mention the technical arms such as cavalry, artillery, and combat engineers.

Therefore, the backbone non-commissioned officers of the brigade and all technical arms will recall a group of veterans who have served in the Wehrmacht from the reserves of the National Guard in various cities and towns.

According to the deployment plan, the nearly 2,900 officers and men of the brigade had to be in place by the beginning of the spring of 1646, and then left for Binzhou in the south for six months of intensive training, and by the end of 1646 at the latest, they were transported to the Far East to devote themselves to military operations against the Manchus. (To be continued......)